One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
grey eyes. Skepsey handed a card from his pocket. The man
perused it, and crying: ‘Dreux?’ waved out of the carriagewindow
at a westerly distance, naming Rouen as not the
place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, that a
foreign General, ignorant of the language, must confine himself
to defensive operations at home; he would be a child in
the hands of the commonest man he meets. Brilliant with
thanks in signs, Skepsey drew from his friend a course of
instruction in French names, for our necessities on a line of
march. The roads to Great Britain’s metropolis, and the supplies
of forage and provision at every stage of a march on
London, are marked in the military offices of these people;
and that, with their barking Journals, is a piece of knowledge
to justify a belligerent return for it. Only we pray to be
let live peacefully.
Fervently we pray it when this good man, a total stranger
to us, conducts an ignorant foreigner from one station to
another through the streets of Rouen, after a short stoppage
at the buffet and assistance in the identification of coins;
then, lifting his cap to us, retires.
And why be dealing wounds and death? It is a more blessed
thing to keep the Commandments. But how is it possible to
keep the Commandments if you have a vexatious wife?
Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hereditary
energy in his crying and coughing; and it was owing, he
could plead, to her habits and her tongue, that he sometimes,
that he might avoid the doing of worse—for she
wanted correction and was improved by it—courted the excitement
of a short exhibition of skill, man to man, on
publicans’ first floors. He could have told the magistrates so,
in part apology for the circumstances dragging him the other
day, so recently, before his Worship; and he might have told
it, if he had not remembered Captain Dartrey Fenellan’s words
about treating women chivalrously which was interpreted
by Skepsey as correcting them, when called upon to do it,
but never exposing them only, if allowed to account for the
circumstances pushing us into the newspapers, we should
not present so guilty a look before the public.
Furthermore, as to how far it is the duty of a man to serve
his master, there is likewise question: whether is he, while
receiving reproof and punishment for excess of zeal in the
service of his master, not to mention the welfare of the coun-
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